Cyclones Lose to Garden City, 4-0

After missing the playoffs last year, the Garden City boys soccer team are hungry to get back on top. They took a big step towards that on Wednesday at Skelos Field in Rockville Centre, beating two-time defending Nassau County champs South Side, 4-0.

Two of Garden City's captains, Sean Bingham and Cosmo Veneziale, scored in the win. South Side played a sloppy first half, but was only down 1-0 heading into the second stanza. The Trojans, however, capitalized on the Cyclones mistakes in the second half and scored on three of their four shots on goal.

"We fell into a false sense of security the first two games," said Cyclones head coach Fred Paul. "We were able to make mistakes and they weren't exposed, and we could create some offense. Today, we made a lot of those same mistakes and we got exposed. This was the first time we went down in a game, and we didn't take the punch and handle it the right way."

Garden City first scored around 15 minutes into the game. A stolen ball and beautiful lead pass gave Bingham a 2-on-2 breakaway attempt, and the captain scorched it past a diving Taylor Kosakoff for a 1-0 lead.

South Side couldn't find its offensive rhythm in the first half, and that carried over into the final 40 minutes. Paul screamed from the sidelines for his team, "to play with some life."

"I saw in the first three games a lot of unforced turnovers," he said. "We're looking to get a homerun ball instead of playing our type of soccer."

Nearly 11 minutes into the second half, Christopher Skorr was in perfect position to tap in a deflected ball and give Garden City a 2-0 lead. Six minutes later, after Kosakoff made another great diving save, the ball trickled away from his reach and Veneziale was there to bury it for a 3-0 lead.

Veneziale added a beautiful, bending set shot into the upper left hand corner of the goal with 12 minutes left in the game for his second of the contest, sealing the 4-0 victory for Garden City.

"There's a lot to cleanup [on defense]; we have to have better support at the sweeper position," Paul said. "We got beat up today. They delivered a punch and we couldn't take it. But this is a young group, and believe me, they'll learn from it."